Monday, August 17, 2009

TV Shows Growing Up

We're still trying to limit Aaron's TV watching as much as possible. It has been relatively easy because he can't take the excitement from any shows except the Thomas DVDs he has already watched, The Wiggles DVDs and some new Richard Scarry DVDs a friend lent us. Oh, and of course, Hairspray and Mamma Mia. I know the day will eventually come where TV time is probably going to be an issue of contention but we're not there yet.

I've been thinking of the TV shows that we watched when growing up in Malaysia. My mother had it EASY. Back then, there were only three channels and even up to the time we left Malaysia (1988) they didn't start broadcasting until 5pm. (Or was that just what my mom was telling us? Not sure...) The stations has really imaginative names: TV1, TV2 and TV3.

I think the third station only came on in the last couple of years before we left. And this one was special! The previous two station had zero advertisements. This shiny new third one was a commercial one and FULL of them. And guess what? I actually remember my brother and I looking forward to the ad breaks. We LOVED them! We watched the shows for the ad breaks. Silly kids!

To give you an idea of maybe why we liked the ad breaks so much, here are the only two shows that I can remember watching.

Battlestar Galactica - The original one. Our bedtime was 8pm but every Tuesday (I think), we got to stay up to watch this from 8-9pm.

The Wild Wild West - I know this was on Wednesdays. For some reason, my mother always let us eat and early dinner in front of the TV to watch this at around 5pm. After that, it was straight off to some dreaded piano lessons. This show was OLD! I just checked and it came out in 1965.

These are the only two that I have vivid memories of. I think there were a few cartoons here and there but not a lot. So, our TV watching and overall addiction didn't really start until we moved to Brisbane. Thats when my mother started to use the 1 week TV ban....